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Title: THE VALUE OF ADDITIONAL DATA TO LOCATE POTENTIAL MANAGEMENT ZONES IN COMMERCIAL CORN FIELDS UNDER CENTER PIVOT IRRIGATION

Author
item Heermann, Dale
item Diker, Kenan
item Buchleiter, Gerald
item Brodahl, Mary

Submitted to: Precision Agriculture
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/12/2003
Publication Date: 6/12/2003
Citation: Heermann, D.F., Diker, K., Buchleiter, G.W., Brodahl, M.K. 2003. The value of additional data to locate potential management zones in commercial corn fields under center pivot irrigation. 4th European Conference on Precision Agriculture. Catholic University Lueven, Germany. June 12, 2003.

Interpretive Summary: Precision farming tools provide the ability to reduce the inputs by variably applying them but the management zones must be established. This project determined the management zones from yield maps for multiple years. The major question answered is the amount number of years data needed to use the yield maps for establishing management zones. This will answer the questions of producers as to how much data are needed and the value of adopting the yield monitor and global positioning technology to collect the data for the next step in applying inputs variably as they pursue adoption of precision farming technology.

Technical Abstract: The identification of management zones and writing management prescriptions is a major question facing producers to implement precision farming. How much and what kind of data are required is the question of most producers. The exploration of temporal frequency analysis of yield data that can be easily understood by the producer is the focus of this paper. The frequency of high and low yield was combined to estimate the yield response zones. results showed that the two-state frequency analysis required at least two years of data. The use of a three-state model for analysis of one years data provided an estimate of 25% and 15% and the two state model with five years of data estimated 39% and 15% to be in the high and low response zones, respectively.